


there and everywhere

by aprhrodite



Category: Nancy Drew (Video Games), Nancy Drew - Carolyn Keene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:02:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27708044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aprhrodite/pseuds/aprhrodite
Summary: thank you for bringing back my voice, my beautiful sweet friend.
Relationships: Nancy Drew/Frank Hardy, Nancy Drew/Ned Nickerson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	there and everywhere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [androgenius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/androgenius/gifts).



> thank you for bringing back my voice, my beautiful sweet friend.

Nancy stood motionless in the doorway. Her toes peeked out into the hallway, her heels still in Frank’s bedroom. Half in, half out. The way she’d always been.

Beyond her, Frank sat on the edge of his bed.

“Ned and I broke up.” Her voice sounded strained.

He ignored the sudden urge to clear his throat. The room felt more than a hundred degrees, and he was positive she could hear his heart beating clear out of his chest.

_Say the right thing. Say anything._

“Are you…?” The words drowned in the back of his throat.

“I miss him.”

_No. Anything but that._

He couldn’t see her face. She was angled away from him, her head resting on the doorframe, arms wrapped around herself. He didn’t know if he should stand or stay seated, but far too much time had passed, and he couldn’t worry about that right now.

“Maybe you should call him,” he said finally. Nancy didn’t move. “I’m sure he’s feeling the same way about you.”

_I would. I think about you all the time._

She exhaled deeply. “I don’t… I don’t know if I miss _him_.”

Frank furrowed his brows. It didn’t matter. She still hadn’t turned around to face him yet.

“Well, I mean—what—what do you mean then?” He hated how much he was struggling with this. He hated the way his words sounded jumbled and disconnected. He hated how far away she was. It had to be less than seven feet from his bed to the doorway, but it felt like miles between them.

Nancy shifted, hesitated, and then twisted around to face him. She wasn’t crying, but her face was puffy and her eyes seemed swollen, like she was on the precipice of tears but there were none left. “He was always there, you know? He…”

Before he could second guess himself, Frank said, “He was a good guy.”

“We were too different,” she said, rubbing her eyes. It only made the redness worse. “He was there and I was everywhere.”

“Yeah.”

“He was always at the airport,” she continued, now studying her fingernails. Frank could tell she was starting to have difficulty speaking. Her voice was pitchy. “And at 3am when I called him because the time zones were all fucked up, he always picked up the phone.”

_You should’ve called me. I would’ve answered too_.

“He’s a good guy,” Frank repeated, suddenly unable to meet her gaze.

She shook her head. “None of it matters.”

“If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t be so upset right now,” he mumbled.

He looked back up at her and she was staring past him, lost in a memory or a train of thought. She fidgeted with a gold chain around her neck. Frank recognized it immediately—it was the necklace Ned had gotten her for their anniversary last year.

_She’s still wearing it._

Nancy was quiet for a long time. When she finally spoke again, her voice was barely audible over the hum of the box fan in the corner. “We were just too different.”

“Sometimes that’s not always such a bad thing,” he said. “I mean, you were just in two different places. Here and… everywhere.”

“What if I never get there?” Nancy said. Her voice was now breathless, desperate. “What if I’m always everywhere and just leave everyone behind?”

“You… won’t.”

“How do you know that?”

_Don’t cry. Please, for the love of God, don’t cry._

“I… I don’t know, I just do,” Frank said with a shrug. “I don’t think love is supposed to be that hard.”

“I miss having someone there,” she said, quiet again. She had finally started to cry. “I miss having someone who was willing to be there even when I was everywhere.”

_I’m here._

“Maybe you need someone who will go everywhere with you,” Frank said.

“I can’t ask someone to do that,” she said with a sigh. She was beginning to get frustrated. “Ned would’ve gone if I asked him, but… I couldn’t make him do it. That’s not fair. He has dreams and goals too. I can’t ask for him to leave that behind just for me.”

For the first time all night, Frank found his voice. “You won’t have to ask the right person,” he said, and she stopped examining the ends of her hair to look at him. “The right person will just do it because… well because they know it’s important to you.”

“I guess.”

Frank stood up. He didn’t know why, it just felt like the right time. Her eyes followed the movement. “You said you couldn’t ask Ned to go with you. Have you ever thought that maybe he couldn’t bring himself to ask you to stay?”

“I… no, I never thought about it like that.”

Frank thought about moving closer, but his feet were cemented to the wood flooring beneath him. A moment passed, and then two, and then three, and finally he said, “It’s okay to miss him.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“Says who?” he said, and when she didn't respond right away, he continued, “I think you're allowed, says me,” She made a noise that almost sounded like a laugh. “You were together for a long time and it’s okay to miss him sometimes. It’s normal.”

She nodded.

He took a step toward her, then another, until they were only a foot apart. Instinctively he reached out for her and she almost fell into him, wrapping herself in the fabric of his sweatshirt. She landed right below his shoulders; he could put his chin on the top of her head. He held her for a moment, let her become comfortable in his arms, and closed his eyes.

“You wouldn’t ask me to stay, would you Frank?” She was talking into his chest and her voice was muffled.

The world felt hazy. He could hear the box fan like someone had placed it right next to his ears even though it was still in the same place in the corner of his room.

_No, of course not. I would follow you wherever you wanted. I would go wherever you wanted._

He tried to block out the smell of her hair, but their positioning made it nearly impossible. He was fighting every single instinct in his body. Do _not_ put your hands on her face, do _not_ guide her chin to meet yours, do _not_ hold her any tighter than this, do _not_ give her any reason to think this is anything but a friend talking to a friend about a recent breakup.

“No,” he said, swallowing. “I wouldn’t.”

“I didn’t think so,” Nancy said, moving her head around to look up at him.

He didn’t return the gaze. He could feel her staring at him, but he kept both his eyes on the picture on his dresser, the one of he, Joe and Nancy on a train in Colorado. He had braces and Joe had a mop of blonde hair in his eyes, but Nancy looked the same. Back then, the hardest thing to figure out was how to respond to her text messages in a way that didn’t make him sound like a total dweeb and how to flirt in a way that wasn’t annoyingly obvious. Things were so much different now. Things were so, so, so fucking different now.

She began to pull away from the hug, pushing some loose strands of hair from her face. His arms fell limp to his sides.

“Thanks for listening,” she said with a weak smile. “I appreciate it.”

He nodded. “Anytime.”

She started to leave. “Goodnight, Frank.”

_Ask her to stay._

“Goodnight, Nancy.”


End file.
